


Her Hardest Hue

by Dracoduceus



Series: Nothing Gold [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Hanahaki AU, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-07
Updated: 2018-09-07
Packaged: 2019-07-08 00:41:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15919467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dracoduceus/pseuds/Dracoduceus
Summary: “Who’s this?” Fareeha asked, interrupting his melancholy thoughts. She wiggled the phone in his face and McCree turned.It was a picture of him and Hanzo, a silly selfie they took beneath the willow tree, their secret meeting place. Hanzo had a silk fan, heavier and more dangerous than it looked, held up to hide the bottom half of his face. His eyes crinkled in a smile, his cheeks dusting with a faint blush as McCree leaned in to kiss his temple.“She’s pretty,” Fareeha said after a long pause where McCree said nothing.*-*-*-*After McCree gets back from Japan, he did a lot of thinking. About Hanzo. About how they parted.Then he started coughing.





	Her Hardest Hue

**Author's Note:**

> This did not turn out the way I expected it to and kind of got away from me.
> 
> The song McCree references is [Tú eres mi sol (You Are My Sunshine)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7DMkVt0-Q0).

Guilt didn’t set in until much later.

It had already done so—Reyes had always said that his temper was like phosphorus, burning fast and quick before burning out—and then in the void that was left behind McCree could feel it like a physical touch. Like the bullet he had taken in Prague the other month: a pinch, his pain drowned by adrenaline, and then burning agony.

He said nothing of it to Reyes and sat through the meeting while he and Hanzo, his face as blank as a mask, said their official goodbyes. McCree tried to speak to Hanzo afterwards but was rebuffed.

He hated that his last words to Hanzo beneath the tree were so cold, so mocking.

Regardless he had a job to do. He knew that Reyes knew that something was up but he didn’t say anything.

Probably thought that work would get it out of his system. It did for a while but it was like a band-aid over a wound that really needed stitches: a temporary reprieve from his suffering to return tenfold when he was alone.

Eighteen years-old (or so he and Reyes guessed) and he already had a drinking habit. But not even the strongest whiskey or tequila could wash away memories of Hanzo. He found that he only got more melancholy.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Fareeha asked, not even  thirteen years-old  and already far too old and knowing for her age. “You haven’t been the same since the Japan trip.”

They all pretended that Fareeha didn’t know what Blackwatch was—even Fareeha herself—but Amaris weren’t stupid. So she referred to their missions as “trips”, extended missions as “studying abroad”. She was never around when they came back just in case they were injured or covered in blood and would find them hours later if they wanted to be found.

McCree made a face. “I made a mistake,” he said. “Met…a friend there.”

“Seems like more than just ‘a friend’,” Fareeha commented. She fiddled with the skirts of her dress. It was Overwatch blue with a white and orange sash to match—a gift from Reyes.

He said nothing and leaned into the back of the couch. Fareeha leaned into him, tucking her shoulder into his armpit and resting her head on his collar. He suspected that she may have a crush on him, or perhaps had one at one point, but neither of them acknowledged it. She knew that he wasn’t interested, especially given their age difference and his relationship with her mother, and she knew that while she crushed on him she didn’t really want  _ him _ , just the idea of him, but  _ he _ knew how feelings worked and gave her all the dignity he could.

Besides. He liked the closeness of her and she the closeness of him. They were better off as siblings.

“Tell me about Japan?” Fareeha asked as they watched the movie on mute. It was an old animated movie from earlier in the century about a girl that got trapped in the spirit world.

McCree took a long sip of his bottle—sadly, just juice as he was supposed to be responsible for Fareeha but he pretended that he had something stronger in it, perhaps some of Torbjörn’s paint thinner-like homebrew alcohol—as he thought.

“Saw a bathhouse like this,” he said, gesturing to the screen.

“Yeah?” Fareeha asked. “They really exist?”

McCree made a noise of agreement as he took another sip. “The…friends we went to visit were very traditional. There were a lot of bathhouses like these that they frequented. We were fortunate to be allowed to tag along.”

He didn’t say that that was how he had first caught Hanzo’s lingering gaze. The young heir was secretive and sneaky as expected of a young ninja-lord but as McCree washed off he could feel eyes lingering on the planes of his back and the curve of his ass. Perhaps even on the tramp stamp that he had foolishly gotten in his youth. He had looked over his shoulder and found Hanzo there, openly staring at him while leaning, arms crossed, against a nearby wall.

“There were these huge trees all around,” McCree continued. “Ain’t had the chance to look in the boiler room but I think they were natural hot springs.”

“Were they sulfur-y?” Fareeha asked. “I heard about the hot springs being like that.”

McCree grunted in agreement. “If you weren’t careful it could make you faint. The heat.”

He had nearly fainted for another reason but that wasn’t something to speak with Fareeha about.

“Did you meet anyone there?” Fareeha asked. “What were they like?”

“Met some bona-fide ninjas,” McCree said because he couldn’t see the harm in it.

Fareeha gasped, pulling back to look at him. “ _ Really? _ ” she put her hands to her face when he nodded. “What were they like?”

He snorted. “Sneaky little shits,” he said. “Both were ‘bout my age—brothers. Their entire family was like that. Ninjas, I mean.”

From the way her eyes narrowed, Fareeha knew that she was stepping into dangerous territory. “Tell me about them?” she asked.

“The younger brother likes arcade games,” McCree said after a moment spent wishing he could smoke around her. She insisted that she didn’t mind it but like hell he was going to lead her down the path he had been on. Nicotine addiction was a hell of a thing. “Had this bright green hair that stood up all over the place. He’d sneak out at all hours of the day and night when he wasn’t in the lessons he liked.” Seeing that she was disappointed in his lack of detail, McCree pulled out his comm and scrolled through pictures until he came up to one of Genji. “You can scroll through them,” he told her and gestured. “To the right.”

With an excited squeak Fareeha leaned back, bringing her legs up close as she pulled the phone close to her face. McCree continued to watch the movie. It brought a pang of… _ something _ in his chest to see the traditional clothes, the  _ hakama _ and  _ jinbei _ and the fancy  _ kimono _ . All of the fans and fanfare and lanterns and magic…the gardens.

“Who’s this?” Fareeha asked, interrupting his melancholy thoughts. She wiggled the phone in his face and McCree turned.

It was a picture of him and Hanzo, a silly selfie they took beneath the willow tree, their secret meeting place. Hanzo had a silk fan, heavier and more dangerous than it looked, held up to hide the bottom half of his face. His eyes crinkled in a smile, his cheeks dusting with a faint blush as McCree leaned in to kiss his temple.

“She’s pretty,” Fareeha said after a long pause where McCree said nothing.

Because she was smarter than her age made her seem, Fareeha didn’t say or ask anything else. She continued to scroll past pictures of the two of them, of Hanzo lit from behind by the setting sun. Selfies of them beneath the willow tree. Pictures of the cherry blossom petals caught in the knife-shaped leaves of the willow.

Fareeha squeezed his arm, her hand over the Deadlock tattoo in a stark contrast between his past and present, and leaned against his shoulder again. She closed his comm, returned it to him, and they continued to watch the movie in silence.

* * *

Ana found them later, freshly showered and cleared by Medical. “Hey,” McCree said with a lightness he didn’t quite feel. “How was date night? Where’d you go?”

“Italian,” Ana replied. “Date night” was code for a mission; “Italian” meant that there were injuries.

McCree clicked his tongue. Fareeha had fallen asleep, cocooned in blankets, near the end of the movie and he had put on another, blindly; something about a wizard that eats hearts and a moving castle, another old classic. “Rein?” he asked.

“Stomach ache,” Ana replied: he was injured but it was minor. “Poor thing ate too much.”

He lifted Fareeha as Ana turned off the movie and then followed her down the hall toward their rooms. “Hopefully it was a good meal,” McCree said.

“Spaghetti and meatballs,” Ana told him with a shrug. “Not the best but not the worst I’ve had. Brought you two some leftovers – they’re in the kitchen.”

McCree waited for Ana to key in the code on their door and helped her place Fareeha in the cot she used when she was on base. He waited in the living room, finding his foil packet of leftovers (labelled with a cowboy hat drawn crudely in permanent marker).

He had found a fork and was eating the spaghetti when Ana came back after putting Fareeha to bed. “You have something on your mind,” Ana said.

McCree shrugged. “Always do, these days,” he said. “Lots o’ thoughts rattlin’ around.”

Sitting across from him, Ana put an elbow on the table and her chin on that fist. She looked unimpressed, not that he seriously thought he’d fool her.

“She brought up Japan,” he admitted.

Ana nodded. “You miss…your friend.”

“’Course,” McCree replied. “Even if we was—even if we  _ were _ just a fling, I…regret how we ended it. If anything I want to apologize.”

“You tried,” Ana pointed out, her face and voice unreadable. “But he wouldn’t speak to you.”

McCree looked down at his food and toyed with a meatball before spearing it on his fork and eating it. Knowing he’d get smacked for speaking with his mouth full, McCree waited until he finished chewing before saying, “I don’t think I did it right.”

“How so?”

“I tried to speak to him in public,” McCree said. “He…he was right that he was expected to produce heirs, something he clearly cannot do with me. Me going up to him in public…well I’m sure the rest of those ninjas knew about us but…” he shrugged helplessly.

“It’s one thing to ignore the shadows and another to shine a light directly on them,” Ana agreed. She reached into the brown paper bag on the table and handed him a foil packet of garlic knots.

They fell into silence as McCree ate.

Ana wasn’t judgmental, had a good enough poker face that it was difficult to tell what she really thought. Unable to remember his own mother, McCree liked to think that she was a good substitute.

And a good mother to Fareeha.

As if sensing his train of thought, Ana reached out and patted McCree’s wrist—his left wrist, the same side as his poorly-healed and poorly-done Deadlock tattoo—with a smile. “I got something for you while we were out,” she added with a sly smile. “It’s in your room.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” McCree said as he dipped a garlic knot in the thick sauce.

* * *

It was a guitar—nothing too fancy, nothing too expensive, just a cheap practice one he could use to learn—and books of music. At first he had almost scoffed at it but flicking through the books, he found one with Spanish folk songs ( Castilian  Spanish, which he learned the one from actual-Spain was called, as opposed to  Mexican Spanish , but he appreciated Ana’s efforts) and one with music from Johnny Cash, both in English and in Spanish.

He picked a song at random and started learning, his tongue held between his teeth as he concentrated. The fingertips of his left hand burned by the time he put the guitar aside but he could  _ kind of _ play the song, albeit at a glacier’s speed.

When he looked at the words, he choked.

There was a sound file that went with it and he loaded it into his terminal, queueing the song he had just played. The music was far too cheerful for the words, plucking along at a cheerful beat when it should have been low and sad.

_ Too soft-hearted _ , the lieutenant used to say.  _ You’re too soft-hearted, Jess. _ It didn’t matter that Jess had just killed two men in cold blood as they begged for their lives. But Jess had bent to offer a small piece of food to a starving dog while still covered in blood. The lieutenant had chased the dog away and wasted a bullet that ricocheted off of the asphalt trying to shoot it.

The lieutenant hadn’t been right about very many things but he had been right that Jess was soft-hearted…sometimes. The next time the lieutenant had tried to put a bullet in the dog, his arm shaking from age and arthritis and excess, no longer strong enough for a revolver like that, Jess had killed him and felt no remorse for it. He took the lieutenant’s gun—his birthright as first and only son—and left his body behind.

He hadn’t mourned the lieutenant but he had mourned the dog, poor starving thing that it was. The desert wasn’t a forgiving place, Deadlock Gorge even more so, and you learned to choose who you cried for. If anyone.

When he came back to himself, the track was repeating.  _ Tú eres mi sol, mi amor, mi úncio sol _ …

With a shaking hand he shut it off, ripped the songs from his book out and tucked them away with his guitar. He found his cheap whiskey and sought the advice of the genie in the bottom of the bottle.

* * *

_ He dreamt of Hanzo. _

_ They were at one of the festivals in town and hardlight petals rained down on them, disappearing in a glitter of light as they hit the ground. Real ones filled the air as well so you never knew what was real and what was fake. _

_ Only the tourists got close to the Shimada- _ gumi _ and took pictures like they were celebrities. _

_ They weren’t entirely incorrect, considering the impact the  _ yakuza _ had on the community. _

_ In reality, what had really happened, was that McCree made a fool of himself and there had been a dozen suited guards surrounding Hanzo and Genji with faces like slabs of stone. Two were the  _ oni _ guards, who wore masks with grinning mouths and painted fangs and tusks. High-ranking fighters, better than the lower-level grunts in suits and shades. _

_ But in McCree’s dream the guards and Genji were gone and only Hanzo was there. No one in the crowds seemed to see them as they walked arm-in-arm around the vendors, being offered foods like the kind of kebabs that McCree had never learned the name of, or sweet rice cakes, or bowls of ramen that they somehow managed to eat while walking. _

_ Hanzo took his hand and they ducked into an alleyway and Hanzo laughed as he pushed McCree into a wall, leaning close. “You’re just a toy,  _ gaijin _ ,” Hanzo had whispered in a voice that wasn’t his own. It sounded like Sojiro’s, his father. “My pet to play with. Bark, little puppy.  _ Wan-wan-wan… _ ” _

_ Alarmed, McCree looked around and saw a starving puppy that stared at him with an eye, just one, that glowed like fire from within. _

_ “Too soft-hearted,” the lieutenant said, shambling like a zombie. His skin was like leather, the gash of his throat made wider as the skin contracted in the sun. The soft tissues of his eyes and mouth and throat were chewed and missing but his words were still clear. _

_ “Just a toy,” Hanzo said and then he was gone. _

McCree woke up.

* * *

McCree woke up to bright lights and a guest on either side of his bed.

There was an odd kind of unease on both of their faces and McCree was immediately suspicious. “Am I drugged?” he asked, his voice coming out strangely clear. Clear enough that McCree thought that if he was indeed drugged, it was nearly out of his system.

His voice sounded strange though. Alien to his own ears.

“No,” Ana said with an odd tone in her voice. Reyes’s jaw was tightly clenched, his teeth gritted.

McCree looked around. He was in a recovery room in Medical. From the white and orange logos, it was on the Overwatch side. By what he could see out of the window, he was perhaps at Gibraltar: it was the only Watchpoint he knew that was so close to the ocean.

Strange, since he last remembered being in Brazil.

“Do you remember anything?” Ana asked, her voice again oddly tense.

McCree turned to look at her. She sat primly in the uncomfortable hospital chair, her fists clenched in her neat Overwatch slacks, wrinkling them.

Distantly, he thought it was an odd thing to notice. Perhaps he  _ was _ drugged despite their words.

“The mission went poorly,” McCree said. His voice sounded odd; perhaps he had a concussion. “We were betrayed and captured. How many made it out?”

“Three,” Ana said.

A terrible loss. Six agents KIA.

McCree felt strangely indifferent to this. He nodded. “What are their statuses?”

“Let…let me worry about that,” Reyes said, speaking for the first time. He went back to clenching his jaws when McCree turned to look at him.

Ana leaned over and reached out to pat his arm but seemed to change her mind and patted his knee instead. Confused, McCree looked down and saw that he didn’t have a left arm anymore; it ended in a stump just above where his elbow would be.

Strange that it didn’t hurt.

Strange that he wasn’t upset by it.

Instead he just felt…dizzy. Like he had stood up too quickly. He blinked at his missing limb. “Ah,” he said.

“How do you…are you well?” Ana asked and McCree looked at her.

“I remember,” he said softly. “I was coughing, wasn’t I?”

Ana bit her lip and nodded. She didn’t cry—he had never seen her shed a tear—but her eyes looked moist, now. He tried to reach out and pat her hand, wanted to reassure her, but remembered that he was missing his arm on that side.

He looked at Reyes. “Medical leave for a week,” he said roughly, not quite meeting McCree’s eyes. “Then maybe longer, depending on what the doctors say.”

“How long was I out?” McCree asked after considering his next question carefully. He had a lot of them.

He looked down at his arm—his only remaining one—and found it bare of any IVs. There was a plastic hospital bracelet around his wrist with his name and service number. The skull insignia of Blackwatch was near the clasp plus the name of the doctor assigned to him. He didn’t recognize the name.

“You got out of surgery five hours ago,” Ana said softly.

McCree turned to look at her. How soon, he thought to himself. The last time he had required surgery, he had been out for much longer before they let him wake up and he had woken up bristling with tubes and needles like Frankenstein’s monster. He didn’t even have a tube in his nose.

“Who is my doctor?” he asked. “When can I be discharged?”

“As soon as you can walk.” McCree turned to Ana. His face felt oddly numb as he tried to frown.

He lifted a hand to his chest and felt the ropy scar running down the center of his chest. There was another one running perpendicular to it below his collarbones. “Five hours after intensive surgery I am allowed to be released?” he asked.

He should be more upset. He should  _ be _ upset.

But he was Empty now.

He should be…distraught. But he wasn’t—he couldn’t be distressed any longer.

_ A blessing and a curse, _ Krishnasami had told him once. Now he could fully appreciate her answer.

“Don’t pick at it,” Ana said briskly. Her hands were steady when she slapped his hand away from his chest.

He supposed he was lucky they even closed the wound with biotics or nanites.

McCree reached down and pulled the blankets off. From what he could see his legs were still whole and he moved each joint to test. There was no pain but Empty ones couldn’t feel anything.

“Here,” Ana said as Reyes didn’t move, his fists clenched on his thighs and his jaw tight. “Let me.” She stood and walked over to the other side of the bed. With her help he was able to sit up fully and swing his legs over the edge of the bed.

Reyes didn’t say anything as Ana helped McCree get dressed.

Reyes didn’t say anything as Ana helped McCree walk out the door, unbalanced without half of his left arm. He didn’t even look up, his eyes trained on the empty bed in front of him, his teeth gritted.

If he could feel, McCree would be hurt—McCree would be a lot of things.

But he was Empty now and he couldn’t even feel guilty for it.

* * *

“Where is Fareeha?” McCree asked. He had declined Ana’s offer of help to clean off but needed some help dressing himself again. Buttons were surprisingly difficult with only one hand, at least until he got used to it.

He let Ana fuss over him, knowing that in some ways she was trying to reassure them both that he was alive. It’s not like he could feel angry or uncomfortable by it, anyway.

“With her father in Canada,” Ana said as she laid out food for him. Paella because she knew he liked it. Some of her homemade vegetable hummus and fresh pita. “He’s probably teaching her how to do shots of maple syrup while riding a moose.”

McCree had met Fareeha’s father exactly once and had a hard time keeping a straight face. And people thought that  _ he _ was ridiculous!

Still, he was good guy, or so McCree had been led to believe.

Ana fiddled with her plate. “I’m concerned how she would react,” she admitted.

“She’d be upset,” McCree replied and looked down at his food. It was dry and tasteless in his mouth. Like eating cardboard—what was the point?

He could see why Empty people were banned from eating competitions.

Ana wouldn’t look at him. “You want me to stay away from her.” If he could, he would be hurt.

He was getting used to not feeling anything at all.  _ A blessing and a curse _ , Krishnasami had said.

“I want a better life for her,” Ana said softly. “I want her away from…all of this. I want her to believe that there aren’t any monsters that go bump in the night.”

“And Hanahaki is the worst monster of all,” McCree said. “I see. Thank you.”

They were in his room so it wasn’t like he could run away. Not that he  _ could _ feel awkward. He leaned back against the buffer of pillows and watched the old show play. It was a movie remake of an old drama about space exploration.

McCree had always thought there was enough problems on  _ this _ world—no sense looking for trouble elsewhere.

“Hanahaki’s a real thing,” McCree said. “It isn’t something you can shield her from. The real world will catch up to her sooner or later and the more you baby her the more it will hurt her.”

Next to him, Ana sighed. “That’s not…what I’m trying to do. Coddle her.”

“She doesn’t need coddling.”

They fell silent, watching the movie.

“Is he supposed to be an Empty person?” Ana asked, pointing at one of the characters.

McCree shrugged. “I don’t think I’ve ever paid too much attention,” he said softly. “But he has a human heart. In this series only humans get Hanahaki, no other alien species. He is half human and has a human heart so he is susceptible to it. His other half is an alien species that swore not to feel emotion—they would think only with logic. So in a way he really  _ is _ Empty.”

Beside him, Ana sighed. “So he pretends to be.”

“The actor is human. For the series he pretends to be Empty. But in the end he is still human and he does experience human emotion—anger. Love. Vengeance.”

“Is vengeance an emotion?” Ana asked.

McCree considered it. “Wanting is,” he said. “I am not hungry but I  _ want _ more hummus.” Laughing, Ana scooped hummus on his plate and gave him a handful of pita chips. “I…cannot be angry at…Deadlock. Or my friend in Japan. I can still want to kill them, though.”

He could feel Ana’s eyes on him. “ _ Do _ you want him dead?”

“No,” McCree said after a pause. “Never.”

Ana sighed. It sounded relieved.

They fell silent again. The half-human character that pretended to be Empty screamed when his friend died. It was a part that used to get McCree all the time. His blood would boil, primitive instincts of sympathetic rage and vengeance welling up in him like magma. It used to bring back memories of camaraderie in Deadlock, of killing a man over a starving dog. He could understand the character’s rage because so often he had felt it too.

Now he no longer felt it and…it felt as if a weight was lifted from him.

He sighed.

“You know,” Ana said slowly as she munched on a carrot. “If a man can pretend to be Empty so convincingly, then I cannot see why an Empty man cannot pretend that he hadn’t been Cut.”

McCree looked at her. “And I have good motivation,” he added.

* * *

Fareeha squealed and jumped into McCree’s arms, nearly breaking the guitar she held in one hand.

“Will you teach me?” she asked, running her hands over it. It wasn’t anything particularly special, just something cheap to learn on. McCree had told her that with the lack of sensitivity in his prosthetic arm, he had a hard time moving his fingers to the chords without breaking the neck.

“‘Course,” McCree said with a laugh. “Jus’ don’t tell your ma ‘cos she gave me this.” He tapped the body and winked at Fareeha.

Giggling, she followed him down the halls and sat down in a little-used common area. He moved her arms and fingers and began teaching her the words and chords to the song he now knew by heart even if he could no longer sing it.

_ Tú eres mi sol, mi amor, mi único sol _

_ Me haces feliz si el día está gris _

**Author's Note:**

> Hopefully you enjoyed it. 
> 
> I'm sorry if it's not quite up to the quality of the other entries of the series. 
> 
> In any case, feel free to visit me on tumblr at [Classywastelandbread](https://classywastelandbread.tumblr.com/).
> 
> Thank you!
> 
> ~DC


End file.
